by Jenna Ryan
“Now, Eli.” Her breath hitched. “Please, now.”
She saw him smile. And with thunder shaking both the floor and her bed, he plunged inside her, deep and hard and hot.
Sadie knew she cried his name. Eli simply filled her up. He took her to a place that was both foreign and exquisite. A sensory plane where nothing and everything felt real.
She hovered there for a delicious stretch of time before the ride slowly began to wind down. If the rise had been beyond words, the free fall back was only a little less stunning. A lovely numbness swirled around the edges of her mind and made her want to drift for as long as she could.
Eli was still rock hard inside her, but a deadweight on top. She’d have mentioned it if her tongue had been working. Or her vocal cords. In the end, a hazy “Mmm” was the best she could manage.
“If that was you wanting me to move, not sure I can.” Eli spoke the words into her hair. “Not even sure I’m breathing.”
“Know the feeling.” She set her fingers experimentally on her chest. “Don’t think I care.” She managed a sleepy smile. “Excellent shot, Lieutenant. I may never walk again.”
“I’d say I always aim to please, but you’d probably hit me, and it wouldn’t be strictly true anyway.”
Keeping her eyes closed, Sadie rode on the ripples of pleasure flowing through her bloodstream. “Spoil my swoony mood, and you’re a dead man.”
“Not much of a threat all in all. Died about the time I hit peak.”
She laughed. “So this really was a one-shot—no pun intended—deal.”
“Depends on how good you are at CPR.”
The lazy tone of his voice got her juices flowing again, just enough that she wriggled beneath him. “Any chance of a revival happening down there, Lieutenant?”
She heard his smile. “Could be. A little.” He raised his head to kiss her. “You said one night, right?”
It took a moment for her thoughts to untangle. “One night of what?”
“Us, Sadie. You said if we only had one night, and we knew it, could we enjoy it without repercussions?”
Unsure whether to be amused or offended, she settled for middle ground and stroked a considering fingernail along his back. “I have to say, you’ve got a much better postorgasmic memory than I do.”
Rising on his elbows, he brushed the hair from her face. “I’m a cop. It’s my job.”
Offense gained ground. “You do your job in bed?”
His eyes glinted. “I do it everywhere but there, Sadie.”
“O...kay.” She drew the word out. “That was a fairly decent save. As usual, however, we’re sliding off topic. And yes, to the one-night question—though I’m still wondering, in a not entirely nice way, why you asked it.”
The glint deepened. “Guess I didn’t do my not-cop-related job as well as I thought.”
“That being what? To make me forget the who, when and where of tonight’s séance?”
He slid his knuckles across her cheek. “For a few hours, anyway.”
“In that case...” Her strength restored, she grabbed the duvet and rolled them off the bed. “Storm’s still circling the hollow, the night’s relatively young and I’m not done with you yet. We did it your way the first time. Now it’s my turn.” Locking her knees around his hips, she bent forward to whisper, “Wanna bet I can make you forget who, when and what you are?”
“That’s a sucker bet, Sadie, but I’m game. Twenty bucks and dinner says not a chance.”
She smiled. “Oh, you are so on, Lieutenant.” Reaching between them, she stroked him lightly. “Bellam women might not make the best life mates, but we’re always up for a challenge.” Drawing out a slow kiss, she altered her grip and smiled at his instant response. “I was right about one thing earlier.” She kissed him again around his hissed breath of reaction. “This night’s gonna be so much fun.”
* * *
ELI THOUGHT HE’D trained his mind to circumvent any and all nightmares. But with thunderbolts crashing, rain streaming and his senses riding a sexual buzz that made him wonder if someone had slipped him some new and highly illegal street drug, the worst of them returned with a vengeance.
He was in Manhattan, dead tired at the end of a killer double shift. Coupled with the undercover operation he’d completed two days ago, he’d been lucky to remember his own address.
He didn’t expect Eve to be there waiting for him, truthfully didn’t want her to be. He’d done battle with a lot of demons lately. Junked-up for the most part, but demons all the same. Throwing his own into the mix would simply feed the anger simmering inside him.
Five unrelieved weeks of living in a violent criminal world had scraped his nerves raw. He’d only agreed to the double shift afterward so his partner could be present for the birth of his first child.
Thunder trailed him up a set of dark, endless stairs. His captain said he needed to go under for a while. Threats from the crime boss whose right-hand man Eli had helped expose were the real deal. Anyone, anywhere could have a gun aimed at his back.
Good to know, he thought as he climbed. He was fast and accurate with his own weapons, but if the captain was right and he wanted to live on, he’d need to get faster and even more accurate.
Did he want to live on? he wondered grimly. Or had Eve and her lover sucked his emotions dry?
He’d cared about her, and believed she’d understood. Police officers did not lead normal lives. Her father had been a sergeant in Vice. Between them, hadn’t he and Daddy made that simple truth clear? Or had the entertainment magazine she worked for given her a false set of ideals? Yeah, sure, anything was possible—in Hollywood.
He’d gone to her place one night without calling ahead. His mistake, according to her. He’d discovered Eve and her male model lover in bed. Her bed, not his, Eli recalled, which had helped, but hadn’t stopped the anger from pushing him into accepting an undercover assignment he hadn’t really wanted....
The upper landing of his apartment building took shape at last. Lightning slashed across the East River. He slid his key into the lock, then the dead bolts. Three clicks later, he was inside. Could have hit the light switch, but why bother? He didn’t need light to find his bed.
His boots echoed on the worn floorboards. A woman’s face flirted on the edges of his mind. Beautiful face, stunning features, incredible smoke-gray eyes....
“Gonna make you forget all the bad stuff, Lieutenant,” she crooned. “If Eve had loved you, really loved you, there wouldn’t have been another man in her bed....”
Thunder shook the entire building. The foundation bucked and almost threw him into a wall. Okay, got it, totally exhausted.
Then he heard a sound that wasn’t thunder, or his boots on the floor, or a sexy female voice turning him on in his head.
Deep inside the shadows, someone moved. So did Eli, simultaneously. He saw a flash of motion, aimed for the torso and only jerked the barrel away at the last second because he spied blond hair.
It was too late to call the bullet back. He swore when the glass shattered, and for a horrible moment thought the shot had gone through flesh before taking out the window.
The woman in the shadow didn’t scream. That felt wrong to him. Didn’t she always scream in the nightmare? Didn’t she scream and run, then stop when shock changed to fury and start throwing things at him?
None of that happened here. Because it didn’t, the fear that formed a spiky ball in his belly turned to ice.
He couldn’t remember the blond woman’s name all of a sudden. Instead, he pictured red-brown hair and features striking enough to make even his great-grandfather’s jaw drop.
He froze on that point. Why was Rooney in his head? Why red-brown hair?
The icy ball tightened, shot up into his throat. He saw her clearly now. Not the woma
n who should be here, but Sadie. She stood in front of the shattered window, staring at him through eyes as dark as the storm. A figure in a black cloak slunk through the shadows behind her.
Blood gleamed on her left shoulder. Low on her left shoulder. The figure behind her stopped when he saw that, and started to laugh. It tossed the knife it held from its right hand to its left, caught it by the blade.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” it said with a chuckle. “You’ve made my task extremely easy.”
Muscles bunching, Eli lunged. But in the next lightning strike, Sadie was gone. Only her blood remained and the sick, sinking knowledge that he’d killed the only woman he would ever love.
The eerie chuckle seemed to be everywhere. “So sad, but that’s how it goes for men like us. We who have monsters inside us are what we are. If it will ease the pain of your loss, however, I give you this balm.”
Rearing back, he flung the knife into the center of Eli’s chest.
“Life in hell is deserved, Eli Blume.” The voice took on a weird cadence. “You’ve forgotten the conjoined legend. Nola didn’t die that night in Raven’s Hollow. It only appeared she did. Switch to the present. In this reality, I, who am Ezekiel, have killed you. You, who are Hezekiah, will leave this earth before the evil can possess you, while she, who is Nola—that would be Sadie in case you’re getting lost—will be mine. As it always should have been, Elijah Blume. Sadie will be mine!”
Chapter Eighteen
Eli woke on the bedroom floor, swearing in the unrelieved darkness.
“What?” Sadie rushed in from the hall. Her feet were bare, and she wore a pair of red pajama pants with a white tank. She held a bottle of wine in her hand like a club. “Why did you shout? What’s going on?” Her eyes scanned the room. “There’s no one here, Eli. Why is no one here if you’re shouting? Unless...” She used the base of the bottle to point while he dragged on his jeans. “You had a nightmare, didn’t you? The kind that makes you want to turn on every light in the house because it was so damn real.”
Crossing to her, he pushed the bottle aside and settled the queasy aftereffects of the dream by kissing her long and deep.
“It was real once,” he told her simply, then rested his forehead against hers and breathed in her scent. “I came home under threat after a brutal shift, saw a shadow and pulled my gun on it.”
“Except the shadow turned out to be Eve.”
“At first, yeah. In my dream it became you, and instead of blasting the window apart, the shot I fired went through your heart. Or seemed to.”
She planted the wine bottle in the middle of his chest. “Some people would call that transference, coupled with post-traumatic guilt, bound together with an unabiding sense of frustration. Then and there meets here and now.”
“With Ezekiel on a rampage thrown in for good measure.” The horror continued to swim in his belly and his brain. “I thought I’d locked the worst of those memories away.”
“The subconscious mind’s a bitch, isn’t it? I do constant battle with mine. Unlike yours, however, mine usually wins, which is why I get headaches, and am not overly fond of going to bed.” She kissed the corners of his mouth. “With one stellar exception, plus two on the floor and still plenty of night left as it’s only a little after two a.m.” Lifting a hand to his face, she softened her tone. “You didn’t kill me, Eli, and you and I both know you’re not going to. Though I do appreciate the worry.”
“The word’s panic, Sadie.” He motioned at the bottle in her free hand. “Are there glasses to go with that?”
“I dropped them in the hall when you freaked.”
“Killed you,” he reminded her. “And at worst it was a shout.”
“You weren’t halfway up the stairs, pal. Cocoa shot past me like she’d been launched from a cannon, and trust me, there’s nothing—or very little—that can drag her away from fresh food. However—” she poked his ribs “—if you want to reestablish your manhood, you could light the fireplace for me. I keep it laid and ready. Unfortunately, the chimneys in this house don’t draw like they did back in Nola’s day.”
“You want details, don’t you?” Going down on one knee, Eli checked the flue. “It’s not a particularly original story.”
“Neither was my engagement to Ty. But it was personal, so that makes it important. I’ll get the glasses and corkscrew while you ponder and light.”
He did ponder, and relive as he stared into the spreading flames. By the time Sadie returned, he had the short version mapped out.
Then tossed it and told her everything, from an interested first meeting through the final night when Eve had thrown a cast-iron skillet at his head.
Afterward, with the fire crackling beneath the sound of heavy rain, Sadie refilled their wineglasses. “I’ll give her marks for weaponry, but not for the tawdry affair. Ten bucks says her male model stud was really a wannabe Broadway actor who figured she could use her magazine connections to help him get onstage.”
Eli smiled into the excellent burgundy. “I already owe you twenty plus dinner.”
“I like Italian, by the way.”
“Do what I can.”
His eyes strayed from her navel to the swell of her breasts. He knew she was fully aware of his thoughts when she set her glass down and stretched like the cat she’d just fed downstairs. Maybe she was a witch at that. How else could he be rock hard in the time it took to swallow a mouthful of wine?
On her feet and mesmerizing him with every sinuous movement, she reached out to him with both hands. “Don’t sweat the—well, I’d say the small stuff, but that’s so not true in your case. Leave the past in the past, Eli. This is now.” She tugged. “This is us.” He stood. “This is hot.”
She took the last step between them. Then brought him with her into the fire.
* * *
MAYBE THE RAIN would never end. Maybe the thunder would keep him awake. Maybe the monster would develop a conscience and go away. Stay away. Forever.
But he doubted it.
So he was down to pills. Amphetamines. Because he didn’t dare fall asleep feeling the way he did.
Sadie didn’t want him, would never love him. He understood that now, and the knowledge burned like acid. Not merely in his heart, but in his stomach, in his brain. In the fists he could no longer keep unclenched.
Why did she want Eli, love Eli? Why couldn’t she see what was right in front of her eyes?
Because she wasn’t looking, that’s why. No one ever did, although that was probably for the best. If no one looked, no one saw, and no one would guess the ugly truth.
Anger and jealousy might be the only things saving him from exposure at this point. People bought in to the obvious, shook their heads and felt for the poor rejected soul. Ah, well, they clucked, he’d get over it. Meanwhile, on with life....
He swallowed another pair of pills, rubbed his eyes and tried not to feel bitter. Bitterness was a hot prod in the monster’s side.
Why, though, why couldn’t he make his fists unclench? Or his teeth? He breathed through them and told himself to let it go. To let her go.
To, please, please, not kill her.
The sound of the rain grew louder. His heart beat faster, his knuckles turned white.
Then, just when he thought his head might explode, someone knocked on the door....
* * *
SADIE FIGURED SHE squeezed in two hours of sleep, tops. But she could live with that, because awake, she’d squeezed in, and just plain squeezed, much better things than her sleeping mind could have offered.
Eli was RoboCop, with a cool and sexy twist. He didn’t short out in the shower. They’d gotten wet, had two more bouts of wild sex, then suddenly—morning.
With it had come a grim reality check. What had really happened during last night’s séance? W
ho’d brought the shinola?
Eli wanted answers and after a quick cup of coffee, he rushed her out the door.
Sadie appreciated that he cared so strongly about keeping her alive, but a second cup of coffee and something more substantial than a cereal bar would have been nice. On the upside, the early rush got her to the Hollow just as Molly was stepping out of the pharmacy.
“Eight oh three and all’s well. Apparently.” She aimed a warning eye at Eli. “Do not destroy my Land Rover.”
“Nag, nag, nag.” He kissed her twice, then a third time. “Got it. Six months left on the lease. A few more bets like the half dozen you won last night, and it’ll be my money covering those payments.”
“Never gamble more than you can afford to lose, Lieutenant. Jerk’s coming by to stick more duct tape on the printing presses this morning.”
“Know it.”
“Know you know it. And while we could go back and forth with that one all day, I want to talk to Molly before the eight-fifteen downpour. Vehicle in pristine condition, Eli, or you might find yourself climbing the walls tonight. Literally.”
Molly waited for her on the sidewalk. “How can you possibly look so happy after that séance, Sadie? It was horrible.”
“I’m picturing a lizard in a black leather jacket—and that séance was staged.”
Molly straightened quickly from her slouch. “I didn’t set it up. I’m not... Is that what Eli thinks? And Ty?”
“About you, no. About the staging, yes. Eli does anyway. I haven’t talked to Ty.”
“He came over to my apartment for a few minutes afterward. He was very upset.”
“I think we all were.”
“All except the person who wants you dead.”
“Monster,” she corrected. “And I imagine he’s beyond upset at this point.”
“Ty says it was never actually proven that Cal didn’t murder Laura. It was more that the authorities couldn’t find sufficient evidence to arrest him.”